"Why, being interpreted out of actor's parlance, he means that he wishes
he could talk the play over with me again and be persuaded that he is
wrong about it."

"I must say," Louise remarked, after a moment for mastering the
philosophy of this, "that you take it very strangely, Brice."

"I've thought it out," said Maxwell.

"And what are you going to do?"

"I am going to wait the turn of events. My faith in Godolphin is
unshaken--such as it is."

"And what is going to be our attitude in regard to it?"

"Attitude? With whom?"

"With our friends. Suppose they ask us about the play, and how it is
getting along. And my family?"

"I don't think it will be necessary to take any attitude. They can think
what they like. Let them wait the turn of events, too. If we can stand
it, they can."

"No, Brice," said his wife. "That won't do. We might be silently patient
ourselves, but if we left them to believe that it was all going well, we
should be living a lie."

"What an extraordinary idea!"

"I've told papa and mamma--we've both told them, though I did the
talking, you can say--that the play was a splendid success, and
Godolphin was going to give it seven or eight times a week; and now if
it's a failure--"

"It _isn't_ a failure!" Maxwell retorted, as if hurt by the notion.

"No matter! If he's only going to play it once a fortnight or so, and is
going to tinker it up to suit himself without saying by-your-leave to
you, I say we're occupying a false position, and that's what I mean by
living a lie."

Maxwell looked at her in that bewilderment which he was beginning to
feel at the contradictions of her character. She sometimes told outright
little fibs which astonished him; society fibs she did not mind at all;
but when it came to people's erroneously inferring this or that from her
actions, she had a yearning for the explicit truth that nothing else
could appease. He, on the contrary, was indifferent to what people
thought, if he had not openly misled them. Let them think this, or let
them think that; it was altogether their affair, and he did not hold
himself responsible; but he was ill at ease with any conventional lie on
his conscience. He hated to have his wife say to people, as he sometimes
overheard her saying, that he was out, when she knew he had run
upstairs with his writing to escape them; she contended that it was no
harm, since it deceived nobody.

Now he said, "Aren't you rather unnecessarily co